The gravestone on the left recorded the life of Matsuba III.
No wonder nothing about him appeared in official books, Matsuba III was clearly a man of ambition.
'The Shadow Team…?'
Seeing those three words etched into the gravestone made Tetsuya's eyes light up.
So Matsuba III was the founder of the Shadow Team.
According to the inscription, Matsuba III established the Shadow Team to build his own power, using Shadow Contracts to control his subordinates.
He later took control of the major Families and upper leadership of Ecruteak City, and even tried to dominate the entire Johto Region.
In that era, with Shadow Contracts as such a powerful tool and Matsuba III's ambition, he really did have the ability to control Ecruteak City. But how did he obtain so many vitality-draining Gastly back then?
The gravestone didn't mention how far his plans progressed.
What came to Tetsuya's mind upon seeing the Shadow Team wasn't the organization itself… but a person.
Catherine.
In his previous life, when he was thirteen, he had been training on a small island near Silver Rock Isle in the Whirl Islands.
One day, something unidentified fell from the sky and crashed into the forest.
When Tetsuya went to check, he found a Skarmory collapsed from exhaustion with a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl on its back.
That girl was Catherine.
He cared for her for more than half a month before she finally recovered.
Tetsuya had asked her what had happened to her, but to her, it was like a nightmare she refused to speak of.
The truth was, they were both homeless. They decided to team up temporarily; having someone to rely on in the wilderness made things safer. After all, she had a powerful Pokémon like Skarmory.
As they trained and survived together in the wild, Tetsuya realized that Catherine was no ordinary girl. Not only was she far stronger than him, but she was ruthless and decisive, never wasting a moment in battle.
She was nothing like a typical thirteen-year-old.
Tetsuya's own personality likely changed greatly because of her.
With her help, his strength improved by leaps and bounds over the next five or six years. He finally had the ability to survive in the wilderness.
To earn money, to raise stronger Pokémon… Catherine was the one who brought him into the world of Pokémon Hunters.
Though the two had grown close, Catherine never spoke a word about her past.
Until one night…
She finally opened up!
She had come from a prestigious Family in the Sinnoh Region that specialized in breeding Flying-type Pokémon with exceptional flight capabilities.
Unfortunately, the family violated the interests of the League and were mercilessly suppressed. Her parents, crushed by the pressure, took their own lives, leaving her with nothing but a single Skarmory.
Skarmory, with its Steel-type resistance, was especially suited to handling storms.
But Catherine was fiercely determined. Even alone, she chose to live on.
…Because she wanted revenge!
But fate had other plans.
She was captured by an underground organization and taken to a remote island deep in the ocean.
That organization was the "Shadow Team".
The Shadow Team ran two main businesses: human trafficking and the Pokémon Black Market.
At the time, one hundred children were taken to the island along with a horde of ruthless Shadow Team agents.
Everyone brought to that island had their original Pokémon confiscated. If they wanted to reclaim them, they had to catch even more valuable ones in the wild and trade them. Each month, everyone was given capture quotas.
They were also required to hand over a minimum number of Pokémon in order to receive food, medicine, and other necessities.
Fortunately, Catherine had a habit of sewing her spatial pouch into the cuff of her sleeve, which allowed her to keep Skarmory from being confiscated. That indirectly saved her life.
She spent three years on that deep-sea island. Every so often, a brutal survival tournament would take place. Those who were eliminated had only one fate… death.
Only ten could survive by the end of the third year. That death match forged Catherine's battle strength and personality to the core.
Years later, she caught a mid-ranking Shadow Team Admin and finally learned the truth. Those so-called "executions" were mostly for show. Killing a few disobedient weaklings was just a way to scare the others.
In truth, the eliminated children were simply sold again by the Shadow Team to other places. No organization would waste such valuable assets. After all the trouble it took to capture them, letting them die would mean a loss. A business like that wouldn't survive long if it kept bleeding profit.
The Team's ship only arrived every six months, to retrieve the eliminated. By that point, these children had already undergone hellish training and become quite powerful. Selling them to underground organizations across different regions brought in high prices.
When Catherine talked about this, Tetsuya couldn't help but be reminded of Earth's "Xx Sect."
Three years later, Catherine naturally became one of the final ten survivors.
But the nightmare wasn't over yet…
The ten were transferred to a new island, much larger than the last. This island was covered in dense jungle, poisonous swamps, and towering mountains. It was far more dangerous. A total of fifty people, survivors from various smaller islands, were sent here.
Again, they were told: "survive three years. Only ten of you can live".
This time, it was more about enduring a hostile environment. A single misstep could get you eaten by Nidoking, Houndoom, Mightyena, or other wild Pokémon.
The idea that elimination meant death had been burned into everyone's minds. No one dared slack off. Death lingered close at all times.
But this time, the three-year mark never came. About a year in, the island's trees began to wither mysteriously.
Within six months, the entire island's vegetation was dead. The lowest levels of the food chain collapsed. Pokémon went berserk and began slaughtering each other. Many people -along with the Shadow Team grunts stationed there- were killed by crazed Pokémon.
Then the island itself began to collapse. In a single night, the entire landmass was swallowed by the sea.
The Shadow Team's ship was nowhere in sight. Everyone had to survive on their own.
The waters around the island were surrounded by whirlpools. Ordinary Water-type Pokémon couldn't cross them, and Flying-types couldn't carry people long-distance. There was no hope of reaching land.
Thousands of Pokémon died in that ocean. Even among the Shadow Team, sixty or seventy members were eaten by Sharpedo.
When Catherine told Tetsuya about that day, her face went pale and her eyes blank.
It was thanks to her father's Skarmory -with its exceptional flight capabilities- that she survived. It flew with her over the ocean for two full days and nights before collapsing on the island where Tetsuya had been training.
After that, there was no news about the Shadow Team.
Perhaps they had suffered heavy losses from the incident. And given that they were engaged in human trafficking, it was only natural that they drew public outrage.
In the end, there was only a brief news report: […Kanto Region's strongest Gym Leader, Giovanni, had led the League's justice forces to destroy a dark organization.] None other than the Shadow Team.
From that moment, Team Rocket in Kanto rose to unprecedented power. Their influence soon spread to Johto, the Orange Islands, and beyond…
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Power Stones?